[mgurlitz]

> from the perspective of security, usability, and especially structured data transfer it's terrible.

Email is basically free, works well for up to 5 megabytes of data, and data security isn't much of an issue for open source work. The post suggests quite a few tools that improve the Git-email workflow, and I think some do prefer those to certain web-hosted Git interfaces.

> there's plenty of standard ways to transmit data that aren't SMTP

Are they free, federated, and as reliable as email? It may be inferior in some technical ways, but it's still a rational choice for small non-private data transfers, such as a Git patch or any another text.

[akerl_]

> data security isn't much of an issue for open source work

Is that the case? It seems like you may be focusing on specifically the privacy aspect of "security". I'd say that email is equally bad at ensuring integrity and authenticity, which are crucial aspects of security for open source work that's consumed by others. We can attempt to backfill those gaps in email using GPG and other tools, but we're trying to put a bandaid over a mortal wound in a lot of ways. Recent vulns have highlighted what has been known for a while: trying to ensure the authenticity and integrity of a protocol as broad as email with as much client-side complexity is a losing battle.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

But then, that applies ten-fold for anything that uses HTTP, or god forbid, browsers. Just look at how even the matrix spec manages to be incompatible with the HTTP spec.